How to use in your fleet

The radius of Shield Bearers are small, and can only cover a fraction of the entire fleet. In order to maximise the utility of overlapping force fields, use group-move with a small set of ships that needs protecting: e.g.Plasma Siege Starships, Botnet Golems, or ships from a cache of Zenith Reserve Ships. Doing so will distribute damage over many individual force-fields and keep them alive for future repair. This tactic can also apply when entering hostile wormholes or covering critical infrastructure in an emergency.

How to counter when in the AI fleet

Only mild speed-bumps unless encountered as a part of a big wave. The interspersing of AI shield bearers amongst its fleet will tend to make battles somewhat longer, which the player can mitigate by unlocking FF-bypassing units or Bomber-like units that have anti-Heavy bonuses.